Stories of art Module 3: Baroque and the Dutch golden age 1600-1700

The third session of this six week course at the National Gallery focusing on the art of the 17th century.

This week looked at the Spanish Golden age with the first lecture given by the course tutor, Lucrezia Walker, looking in detail at El Greco, Velazquez, Zurbaran and Murrillo. The focus was on Velazquez and his work at court. I would have liked a bit more on Murrillo but I think we ran a bit short of time.

The second talk was given by Larry Keith from the National Gallery conservation department discussing how the colours in Velazquez pictures have altered and the gallery’s ethos for correcting this. He had interesting photos of the original colour of the bed cover on the Rokeby Venus. He also talked about restoration of “The House of Mary and Martha” where colour deterioration had altered the way the shadows worked in the picture. A fascinating talk.

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